How do you make an XML sitemap for a WordPress site?

Question: I am currently taking your webinar series on SEO (Olson Silver Company/Rodney Olson). I took your free tutorial first. I had a few questions regarding xml site maps that I was hoping you could help me with. We had someone set up our site for us but they didn’t put all the pieces in place for proper SEO so now I am bumbling my way through it. They used word press with the theme sand box to set it up.

From my understanding there should be a category in the editor specifically for the xml site map. Mine doesn’t have this. Is there somewhere else I should put my site map?

There is widgets/plugins that I can download that will create a site map for me within WordPress should I use one of these?

Will the site map automatically pick up the changes I have made to my title, description etc. or do I need to update it?

Should I create my site map before or after I make most of my changes?

Thank you so much for all your help I am finding the webinar to be very useful and I am so glad I found out about it!

Answer: Really the XML sitemap can be made by the free XML generator I recommend in class (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/). Just remember that FIRST you need to create an HTML sitemap, a clickable path FROM the home page TO your GATEWAY pages to each and every page on your website. Google and other webcrawlers will NOT usually follow Javascript navigation.

So, first, create the clickable path from the home page to each and every page of the website, usually through an HTML sitemap… Then, use the free XML sitemap and upload to your site as I teach in class. Finally, tell Google about it through the robots.txt file and in Webmaster tools. You can check out mine at http://www.jasonmcdonald.org/robots.txt – it shows you the location of the XML sitemap.

About
Jason McDonald, Ph.D

Got a question? Click this link to email Jason or call 888-993-1122. Dr. Jason McDonald is founder and Senior SEO / Social Media Director of the JM Internet Group. He teaches the SEO training classes for the group, and therefore provides most of the SEO tips for this blog. His goal with this blog is to provide an easy 'one-stop shop' for the busy marketer looking for tips, tricks, and secrets on how to get to the top of Google and Bing for free using proven SEO tactics. When not dreaming up SEO tips, Dr. McDonald lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two dogs, a cat, four iguanas and twelve children (just kidding). Really you read down to the bio on this guy? Enjoy the blog.